


sad songs in the summer

by frutescence



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, POV Toph Beifong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24955006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frutescence/pseuds/frutescence
Summary: Toph will happily admit that she genuinely, honestly, likes Zuko. She has told her friends this repeatedly. She thinks Aang is starting to get it, but that’s because he’s realized Zuko is probably one of the only firebenders that won’t try to kill him on sight.She would never admit it, but she sees herself in the way that Katara and Zuko argue, in the way Zuko never seems to fully understand what Sokka is trying to say, and in the way even now she still feels her temper flare with Aang. It reminds her, weirdly, a lot of herself in the early days of their little adventure, where she was still trying to find her footing.(A look into Toph and Zuko’s friendship between The Western Air Temple and Sozin’s Comet.)
Relationships: Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 88
Kudos: 1122





	sad songs in the summer

As a general rule, Toph considers herself to be quicker on the uptake than most people she meets. _Especially_ her friends.

Unfortunately, she cares about them. Aang would probably say it’s _love_ , but that word has historically left a bad taste in Toph’s mouth and she would just rather stay away from it altogether. But since she cares about them, that means she has to pray to all the spirits she doesn’t believe in for _patience_ so she won’t hurl boulders at their heads when they’re all being so _stupid._

Toph will happily admit that she genuinely, honestly, likes Zuko. She has told her friends this repeatedly. She thinks Aang is starting to get it, but that’s because he’s realized Zuko is probably one of the only firebenders that won’t try to kill him on sight.

The Water Tribe siblings are decidedly _not_ warming up to their local angsty firebender.

She doesn’t like Zuko romantically because _gross_ but she likes Sparky in a genuine friendship kind of way. She’s pretty sure he’s still caught up on that gloomy girl Katara and Sokka mentioned. She doesn’t know a lot about the Fire Nation, but she’s spent enough time around Earth Kingdom nobility to know that it’s very possibly an arranged marriage like her parents’ marriage was.

Plus, Zuko is the most uncomfortable person she’s ever met. Toph thinks that’s fucking hilarious.

Seriously, who knew the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation was a massive dork? He couldn’t have a normal conversation if his life depended on it. _This_ is the guy they’re all so afraid of?

She would never admit it, but she sees herself in the way that Katara and Zuko argue, in the way Zuko never seems to fully understand what Sokka is trying to say, and in the way even now she still feels her temper flare with Aang. It reminds her, weirdly, a lot of herself in the early days of their little adventure, where she was still trying to find her footing.

She feels their similarities in Zuko’s posture when Aang and Zuko are firebending together, even though Zuko’s firebending is still out of sorts. Aang is afraid of fire, so it’s probably better that there’s no actual fire yet.

Zuko stands and listens to Aang’s questions, pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath, trying to collect himself, and suddenly she’s transported back to the sounds and smells of the Earth Kingdom and that wretched, bitter first day of earthbending training where Toph just couldn’t fathom _why Twinkle Toes just didn’t seem to get it._

There’s a lot of differences between Zuko and Toph, however, and she can’t help but silently think about it every time Katara goes on her daily Let’s-Complain-About-Zuko bender: before Zuko, she was the new addition. They just happened to find her, happened to be in Gaoling at the right time and in the right place to hear about Earth Rumble VI.

They pulled her out of her depressing hometown and away from her shitty parents and shitty earthbending teacher. It’s possible that without them, she still would have run away. She’d overheard her parents talk about marrying her off more times than she could count, because then at least she’d be someone else’s _burden_ for once, and she couldn’t let that happen.

When she came, she didn’t have the history with them that Zuko does.

She didn’t know Zuko _before,_ back when he was actively hunting them. Some scary banished prince with what sounds like a wicked ponytail and a terrifying ship. She’d only ever heard about that Zuko.

And she’d heard about it a lot because Katara liked to bring it up during her daily Let’s-Complain-About-Zuko tirade.

She also remembered, distantly, the guards at her house sharing some story about the Fire Lord burning his own son in a way that now if she thinks about it for too long, would make her vomit over the sheer cliff face of the Western Air Temple.

But she doesn’t know that Zuko, either.

She only knows this Zuko, who spent hours profusely apologizing after he accidentally burned her and who immediately offered to carry her around on his back just to prove he was serious even after her feet had been healed by Katara. This Zuko, who makes bad jokes and _surprisingly_ good tea, who has a lot of knowledge about theater and has even more opinions on it.

Toph doesn’t understand anything Zuko’s saying about theater, but it’s clear it matters to him. It’s also the only time Zuko’s heartbeat slows down enough that Toph isn’t worried he’s about to have a nervous breakdown, so she decided to allow it.

Toph had been joking, originally, about actually making Zuko carry her around on his back. But either Zuko doesn’t understand a joke when he hears one or he realized she was joking and decided to do it anyway. Toph is impressed.

Plus, it’s funny to vault herself up onto his back with a slab of earth and hear him shriek in surprise and try not to fall on his face.

* * *

During the week where Zuko is carrying her around and their whole group is still afraid of him, she makes him carry her _everywhere_.

Toph has a blast harassing Zuko.

She makes him do laps around the temple, and Zuko does it all good-naturedly and doesn’t complain about it _once._ If she wasn’t having so much fun, she’d think he’s a masochist.

One day, Toph made him carry her out into the woods where he had camped when he burned her. She told him to set her down in the clearing she sensed wasn’t far from there.

Toph jumped off Zuko’s back and bent a chair for herself before her body could hit the ground. Zuko sat down across from her and crossed his legs.

“I want you to teach me how to beat a firebender,” Toph said.

“Okay,” Zuko said. He seemed to think for a moment. “Uh, so what do you- “

“I don’t want you to shoot fire or anything like that right now if that’s what you’re wondering.” Her feet had healed but she wasn’t _that_ eager to explain to Katara where any accidental burns might have come from. “But – I learned earthbending from the badgermoles. Every element has the set of principles a bender needs to understand to be successful. In earthbending, you have to wait and listen for the right moment to strike. You have to act decisively in those moments. In an attack, most earthbenders – or at least, most _good_ earthbenders have to endure the attack until the right opportunity for a counterattack reveals itself. I know everyone fights differently, but I want to know those kinds of principles about fire.”

“Okay,” Zuko said again. He shifted a little. “Firebending represents energy and life. At its core it comes from the breath, so that’s why most firebenders emphasize breath control above all – wait, you learned _earthbending_ from _what?”_

Toph cackled.

* * *

“I can’t see out of my left eye,” Zuko told her the next day. He’s breathing heavily. It’s like he knows he’s about to spiral into a full-blown panic attack but is trying to push it down for as long as possible. “Or hear out of my left ear. That’s why I burned you. I couldn’t sense you coming. I’m sorry”

Today, Toph had made Zuko carry her to the cliff’s edge above the temple. He had described it to her when they first got there. The temple was built into a cliff so that from above, the temple was indistinguishable from the surrounding mountains. It was less breezy up here than it was in the temple halls below. The wind wasn’t a problem for Zuko because, firebender, but Gaoling was practically on the equator. Toph was _cold_. So they were both sitting at ground level, with Toph’s legs crossed under her and Zuko’s dangling off the edge of the cliff.

 _(When they had first climbed up there, Zuko tilted his head back as if he wanted to soak up as much sunlight as possible. Toph had asked Zuko how deep the cavern was because she couldn’t see it from her earthbending. “Deep,” he had said, and she socked him in the arm.)_

Until Zuko’s little revelation, the two had been sitting in companionable silence for the last half hour.

“I have two bad eyes, so I’m not one to judge.” Zuko doesn’t respond to her attempt at humor. She doesn’t really _do_ feelings, but she knows what it’s like to have people think less of you for something out of your control. “Am I the first person you’ve ever told?”

She thinks she knows why he’s telling her. To explain, maybe, a little more why someone so focused on constant control accidentally almost set someone on fire. To add weight to his apology. To tell the only person that’s not going to judge him or think less of him for it.

  
Zuko is quiet for a moment, which effectively answers her question. Eventually, he continues. “I don’t – maybe? I told Uncle, but. He was there when it happened. So it doesn’t count.” He shifts, and his heart rate is speeding back up again, breathing exercises be damned. “It happened right before I was banished. I’m sure he told the ship’s crew. It’s – my banishment is pretty infamous. In the Fire Nation. There was an audience. And there’s – it left a really large scar.”

Toph thinks again about the guards gossiping where they thought she couldn’t hear, thinks about Zuko’s _uncle_ , the incredibly nice man who in a single conversation was more of a parent to her than either of hers had ever bothered to be. The guards had said there were hundreds of people there. In the largest room in the Fire Nation palace. Watching Zuko be burned.

She was born blind. Sight through earthbending is the only kind she’s ever known.

Her parents have their issues, but she also knows for a fact that her father wouldn’t hold her down and sear half her face off in front of an _audience._ Like it was some kind of performance.

“Oh yeah?” She asked, feigning lightness. “I haven’t heard of it.” It’s not a total lie, at least.

Zuko was quiet for a while. He seems tired. He always seems tired, but this is a different kind of tiredness. The kind that comes from longing for something that won’t return. “It’s – it’s not a very interesting story.” He swallowed thickly, and Toph is blunt but she’s not _cruel_ , and she takes her cue to back off.

She’s almost shocked to realize she’s _angry._ Not at Zuko, but at his asshole sister, at all the people who were forced to watch. But she pushed it down. She knows Zuko the best out of all of them, but she doesn’t know if he’d realize that she’s not angry _at_ him but angry _for_ him, and their friendship still feels too fragile to survive that kind of a misunderstanding.

“What a pair we make,” Toph said, sitting back on her hands. “One eye and three ears between us. At least we have all our arms.”

Zuko laughed at that. It was a stilted sound, like Zuko still wasn’t used to hearing it leave his mouth. Despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, Toph still couldn’t help but smile.

* * *

The wood in the fire crackling as it burned. It was finally warm enough that the beetlecrickets were out and chirping around them.

Objectively, it should have been a nice night. But there had been a nagging thought at the back of Toph’s brain, and it wouldn’t leave her alone.

The others had fallen asleep. As the resident firebender, Zuko was in charge of the fire. The guy didn’t seem to sleep a lot, so he was usually the last one to bed and the first one up.

Even though everyone else was asleep, Zuko was hanging on the fringe, as he did often. It was almost like he was almost afraid to remind people that he was there.

Toph got up and flopped down on the ground on his right, breaking him out of whatever trance he was in by the fire.

“Sparky– “

“Please don’t call me that,” Zuko sighed.

“ _Sparky_ , listen to me. I don’t care that you don’t like it.” Zuko sighed again. “What, do you want me to start calling you _hotman_ or whatever Twinkle Toes has been calling you, because- “

“Sparky is fine.” Zuko supplied quickly. Toph smiled to herself.

“Glad we could settle that.” Zuko didn’t offer anything else to the conversation, but Toph was still thinking about the question that had been eating at her all day.

“Hey, how do messenger hawks work?”

Whatever Zuko had been expecting her to say, it wasn’t that. “Uh- it depends? It varies by the type of hawk. They’ve been in use for centuries. They act as a form of mobile communication – in battlefield situations and naval operations, it’s particularly useful to have that kind of relatively instant communication.” Zuko sounded like he was reciting something from a scroll he had memorized. “Tamed messenger hawks typically have a calm temperament and can deliver messages almost anywhere. Typically, a hawk is trained on a specific route – moving from point A to point B, and so forth. Some hawks are trained to respond to fire blasts, so if you’re somewhere new, the hawk can see the signal and know to land there.”

Toph blinked. “Fuck. Okay.”

“Don’t let Katara hear you say that word.”

Toph sat up enough to punch Zuko in the arm and then laid back down.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Sokka bought a messenger hawk when we were in Fire Fountain City, right before the eclipse. I borrowed it and had Katara write a letter to my parents. I was just wondering if they ever got it.”

Zuko’s silence was telling. “Probably not,” he said finally.

“Okay.”

“What were you writing to them about?”

The fire crackled loudly as a piece of wood settled into the flame. “When I joined, I left without telling my parents. I don’t regret doing it. But I feel bad about it sometimes.” A lot of the time.

“Were you close to them?”

Toph snorted as she sat up. “No. They just – I know they love me, in the only way they know how to love someone. But they’re rich, and I’m their only child. When I was born, my parents knew they couldn’t have any more kids. But I was _blind_. And they thought that made me fragile and incapable. They would rather no one know I existed rather than have people think their only child was _lesser_.”

Toph turned to face the fire. When she could feel the warmth of it on her face against the chilly night, she continued. “I ran away when I was six. That’s when I earthbent for the first time. The badgermoles – they’re the first earthbenders. And they’re _blind._ I followed them long enough and started trying to do what they were doing. That’s the first time I ever bent earth.”

“That’s incredible,” Zuko said in that extremely earnest way of his. Toph knew he meant it.

“I wish my parents had seen it that way. I told them and they were _horrified_. To them, it was one more thing that could hurt me. But I had learned to _see_ through earthbending. I can feel the vibrations in the earth. It’s _how_ I see. It’s why I don’t wear shoes. I was so happy and so excited because I thought the badgermoles had given me freedom. But instead, my parents just doubled down on everything and hired the most _useless-_ ” The pebbles around them jumped in the air when she slammed her fist on the ground “-earthbending instructor. I did deep breathing exercises for _six years_. Six! I know that’s your thing, sparky, but in earthbending? Where the rock doesn’t move unless you want it to? You cannot spend six years breathing.”

“You’re right. Uncle talks about the earthbenders like that. Plus, you’re a great earthbender."

“I’m the best earthbender in the _world_ , and don’t you forget it.” She punched him in the arm again and he rubbed at it absentmindedly. “I won my first Earth Rumble tournament when I was 10. Youngest entrant. Youngest winner. Youngest master of all time. When Aang, Katara, and Sokka came to Gaoling, I told my parents. Instead of being proud, they doubled down again. Said I had been allowed too much freedom. So I ran. Found that freedom myself.”

“But you still miss them.”

“I don’t _miss them_.” Toph hissed. It was possible the _tiniest_ piece of her did miss her parents, though. “I want them to be _proud_ of me. Just once. I want to not be their dirty secret anymore. So I wrote them a letter because, maybe after this is all over, they’ll understand why I had to go. If they wouldn’t give me the opportunity, I had to take it myself.”

She sensed Zuko nod next to her. “You’re teaching Aang earthbending. That’s not nothing. In the past, the four teachers of the Avatar were often regarded as the most highly skilled benders of their element.” The fire in front of them flared ever so slightly. Toph ignored it. “Even if they didn’t get your letter, you can explain in person after.”

Toph laid on her back. “You know Sparky, for someone as emotionally constipated as you, you’re not half bad to talk to.”

Zuko sputtered. “Wha- I am not _emotionally constipated- “_

* * *

She doesn’t get the chance to harass Zuko again for the next couple of days. Aang and Zuko go on a little field trip to meet _dragons._ Allegedly _extinct_ dragons. She gets that Zuko has to sort out his firebending performance issues and Aang needs to spend some time with him, but still. It was her idea.

With Zuko gone, she had to go bother _Haru_ instead, which was not nearly as fun.

It’s another couple of days before Katara pulls Aang aside for some waterbending thing, and Toph jumps at the opportunity to hang out with Zuko.

They go back to the same cliffside from a few days ago, above the cold and blustery temple below them.

Toph practices forming different little shapes out of the earth and throwing them into the very large, very deep hole below. Each rock is maybe the size of her hand, formed into various things like chairs and tables and on one memorable occasion, a very intricate depiction of Momo.

“You’re going to hit someone with one of those if you’re not careful.”

Toph sent one of the rocks (this time, in the shape of a little rabaroo) towards Zuko’s head on her left.

She’ll admit she hadn’t noticed before he told her, but whenever Zuko’s in a one-on-one situation, he always tried to have the person sit on his right, presumably so he can see and hear them. 

“Hey!” Zuko exclaimed, rubbing his head. Drama queen. “I already have to look at Haru’s terrible mustache. That’s punishment enough.”

Toph barked out a laugh. “Sparky, was that a _joke?”_

Zuko snorted. “It’s true. My uncle used to say that it’s not fair to judge people, but exceptions can be made for facial hair.”

Toph sighed. “Man Sparky, I miss the guy and I’ve only met him a handful of times. I can’t imagine how you feel.”

Zuko went quiet in a thoughtful way. He did that a lot. “Uncle broke out of one of the most heavily guarded prisons in the Fire Nation on the day of the eclipse and I never had the chance to apologized for betraying him. What if he doesn’t forgive me? What if something happens to him and I don’t get the chance to apologize? He’s- “

Toph cut him off before he could spiral. “If he managed to bust out of a _Fire Nation prison_ , I’m sure he’s fine. And he _loves you_. An insane amount. I mean, he chased Aang around the world with you, survived your angst _and_ your crazy sister, so how bad could it be?” She didn’t want to imagine Zuko’s life (because, quite frankly, Zuko’s life sounds terrible) but she was pretty sure she knew what he was thinking. He’s kind of predictable.

No wonder his sister kept beating his scrawny ass.

Zuko shifted, a little uncomfortable. “Yeah. I just- we weren’t a happy family. Ever. Azula was – actually, really nice when our father wasn’t around when we were younger. It’s – he brought out the worst in us both, in a lot of ways. Pitted us against each other. Uncle and – and, my mother, were really close. And Uncle’s son – my cousin – died in the Siege of Ba Sing Se, and that changed him.”

Zuko wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, but the guy was notoriously bad with feelings. She couldn’t recall anyone ever mentioning Zuko’s mom before. “Where’s Mrs. Fire Lord?”

“I don’t know,” Zuko said. “I thought she died. My father told me on the day of the eclipse that she had been banished.”

“And?”

“And after five years, she’s probably dead.”

“You survived banishment.”

“ _Barely_. I almost died more times than I can count that first year. And I had resources. My mom committed treason.”

Toph didn’t point out that Zuko, by her counts, committed treason against the Fire Nation more often than some people breathed. She filed that information about his mom away for later and made a silent promise that once this is all over, one way or another, she’d help Zuko find out what happened to his mom. Even if she didn’t survive it. “Sounds like a fun family conversation.”

“He shot lightning at me afterward, so not really.”

And she thought _her_ family was fucked up. “And you’re still alive? Shit.”

Zuko shifted kind of uncomfortably in the way he always did after anyone said anything remotely nice about him. “It was nothing. I redirected it – Uncle came up with it after studying the waterbenders.”

“Shit,” Toph said. “Wouldn’t have struck you Fire Nation guys to be studying other bending strategies. But how would I know? Six years of breathing exercises. Got any other cool bending tricks?”

She sensed Zuko shrug. “Firebenders gain power from the sun. One of the people on my ship – his name was Lieutenant Jee, he taught me it. I can sense directions based on the sun. I always know where East and West are, and roughly how far from the poles and the equator we are. Pretty useful on a ship. You can use the stars at night to navigate and the sun during the day.”

“From any point in the world?”

“I spent 3 years searching for the Ava- for Aang, and I learned it 2 years ago. Every single time I’ve tried it, anywhere in the world, it’s worked. Kind of like a sixth sense.”

“ _No fucking way.”_ That was so _cool._

Really, it was unfair.

* * *

As the comet inched closer and closer, time seemed to speed up.

Zuko and Sokka broke Suki and Sokka’s dad out of what is, apparently, the Fire Nation’s most infamous maximum-security prison. Zuko came back quiet and half dead. He sat quietly around the campfire, watching others speak for days and barely said anything himself.

It reminded her of his first couple of days with their little group when he was still trying to find his footing. Toph secretly suspected that Zuko just didn’t do well with parental figures and also didn’t have any friends back in the Fire Nation (he’s related to _Azula_ , after all). She tells him a couple of nights later that Sokka and Katara’s close relationship with their father unnerves her a little, as foreign a concept as that is to the both of them, and Zuko nodded in agreement.

A couple of days after the prison break, Zuko and Katara go to _kill a guy_ , which is funny because it’s a lot like two angry cats trying to take down a Komodo-Rhino.

Zuko tells her about it one night when the two of them are talking by the Fire, the others fast asleep. How they found the wrong guy at first. How Zuko learned about bloodbending and Hama on their flight back. How they found the guy that had killed Sokka and Katara’s mother and he was a coward.

“Katara _stopped the rain,_ ” Zuko whispered to Toph, seated on his right. She could imagine him staring at Katara, asleep across the circle. He had stated this fact no less than four times already. “She fully _stopped it.”_

Toph had shrugged. “I told you, Sparky.” Zuko hated the nickname, which is why she insisted on calling him it. “If Katara had _actually_ wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

Everyone gets a field trip except for her, and yeah, they have all the times he carried her around and they talked about their family trauma, but _still_. It’s the principle.

Sozin’s Comet is days away, and she thinks there’s something Zuko’s not telling them, but there’s too much high-strung energy going around _already_ and the last thing they need is to think that Zuko is suddenly keeping secrets.

They can’t afford it. They have to be united if they want to stand any chance of beating the Fire Nation.

Even then, the odds aren’t looking great.

Somehow, because Zuko’s not-so-secretly a huge nerd and because they can’t just sit around and be silently stressed anymore, they go to see a play. _About themselves._

Toph has never been so excited.

The beginning of the play was great. They _nailed_ Sugar Queen. They nailed Sparky’s drama, and Sokka’s annoying complaints about meat. She’ll have to find the guy playing her later and get his autograph.

Zuko, a seat away from her, is clearly having a bad time. Probably because he doesn’t like the reminder that he was, until recently, one of the “bad guys”. 

For the most part, the first half of the play goes smoothly.

And then intermission starts, and they all got up from their seats to go out into the hallway. Sokka is talking about leaving to go give Fake Sokka some pointers. Zuko’s probably going to go brood in the hallway.

And normally, she would leave it alone. But as they’re all walking into the hallway, someone pushing past them loudly says “I wish they had done the scar scene, that Zuko actor was _so good_ at it in Glory to the Nation,” and Zuko freezes.

Toph wants to _scream,_ and she doesn’t beat the guy up because they are technically undercover right now, but she thinks about it.

Zuko’s already fast heartbeat _skyrockets_ , and though Toph can almost feel the curiosity radiating from their friends, she also has enough sense to know that Zuko’s got capital-t Trauma, and his emotionally repressed feelings probably have their own emotionally repressed feelings. He deals with his feelings when he wants or not at all.

She obviously can’t see them, but she just _knows_ one of the others is about to say something stupid. She slid her arm around Zuko’s elbow and pulled him roughly, trying to snap him out of whatever corner of his mind he’s in. “Sparky, come get a drink with me.”

Zuko follows her to the concessions silently. He reads the menu out loud to her after some prompting. He doesn’t get a drink and the two of them wander back towards the entrance, eventually sitting down in the hallway.

“You want to know.” It wasn’t a question. Toph didn’t need to be able to see to know that Zuko wasn’t looking at her.

And okay, she does want to know. But she wants to know because that’s the kind of thing you tell your friends, not because some assholes think Zuko’s fucked up family is _funny_. “Yeah, maybe, because we’re _friends,_ and that’s the kind of thing friends share to support one another _._ ” According to Katara, at least. _“_ But you don’t owe people, Sparky. Your shit is your shit. If you want to tell me things, then I’m all ears. And everyone else would be, too, for the record. But it’s not hard to piece together that your family is kind of a shit show, and if you want to share what is obviously a very horrific, _abusive_ moment in your life, that’s up to you. It should be because it’s something _you_ want, and something you’re ready to do. Not because of some theater assholes or some random guy’s shitty comment.”

Zuko leaned back against the wall. His heartbeat was still horrifically fast, but now that he was sitting down, Toph was less concerned. If he passed out, he’d probably just fall onto the floor or her. The last thing they needed was for Zuko to pass out and concuss himself days before the comet.

“The scar is – I know I told you a bit about it, but it’s big.” Zuko started. “I spoke out of turn in a meeting. I refused to fight against my father. He burned half my face off and banished me. He said I could only return home if I – if I captured Aang.”

Toph closed her eyes and bit back the urge to scream, to punch the wall behind her and rage. She wants to hit everyone in the fucking theater troupe with boulders because this is _comedic_ to them. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

A year older than she was now. A year younger than Katara. If Aang doesn’t kill Zuko’s dad, she’ll do it herself.

Something else horrific clicks, and it knocks the wind out of her. “But Aang wasn’t found until- “

“My father never intended for me to return home.” Zuko interrupted. Toph could hear Zuko rubbing at his scar on the side further away from her. “I didn’t really realize until Ba Sing Se. I didn’t – he wanted me out of the way.”

Toph has a terrible image in her mind of Zuko, from ages 13 to 16, so desperate to find the Avatar because it’s his only chance to go home. She wonders what that’s like, to spend years chasing an idea, unwilling to accept that your only remaining parent, the one that is supposed to love and care for you, wants you out of the way.

“Can I – can I touch it?” Toph asked.

Zuko’s back went rigid, and she prepared to be told no. After a couple of moments, he reached over and took her hand, drawing it up to the left side of his face.

She ran her fingers around the unscarred half of his face, so she could have his whole face visualized in her mind. The scar was _big_. She had thought it must have been an exaggeration, but no. Like he said. The scar must have covered at least a third of his face, from the left side of his nose up and around and over his ear. The skin was tough and slightly raised compared to the unmarred skin around it.

It was unquestionably a handprint.

“Does it hurt?”

Zuko shifted uncomfortably and Toph dropped her hand into her lap. She wanted to know.

She didn’t need to ask if he had let anyone else touch it before. She knew.

“Not really. It stings in the cold. The – it’s pretty deep. All the nerves are burned. It was infected a lot, right after. So that hurt a lot. But less now.”

Toph reached out, grabbing Zuko’s hand in hers. He froze and immediately tensed his hand. “Your dad’s an asshole. You deserved better.”

“Yeah.” Zuko relaxed his tense grip on Toph’s hand. He squeezed their hands together twice. “I know that, now. But thanks.”

They sat down for the second half of the play. When the play reached the catacombs beneath Ba Sing Se and Fake Zuko betrayed Fake Iroh, Toph reached her arm over Katara. She grabbed Zuko’s hand from where it was threatening to burn the velvet seats beneath them and squeezed Zuko’s hand twice.

Just to make sure he knew she had his back.

**Author's Note:**

> ***Edited 7/22 to fix minor punctuation and spelling
> 
> a little toph/zuko friendship. as a treat. 
> 
> I haven't written anything in over two years but *gestures around* I figured why not? Avatar has gotten me through a lot this quarantine, and in a lot of ways, this fic is just kind of to prove to myself that I can finish something. And that's a very good thing! And hopefully, I'll finish more things!
> 
> Title is from "Sad Songs In The Summer" by Olivia O'Brien.
> 
> If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! It means more to me than you know <3 :)
> 
> come cry about atla w me on tumblr. http://frutescence.tumblr.com


End file.
